GCV’s chief operating officer Tim Lafferty and I co-chaired a dinner debate in London last month on whether flying cars or autonomous vehicles would dominate the future of urban and interurban transport. The debate was inconclusive because nobody could agree on a particular urban location – a lot depends on whether you pick Dubai or Naples.. But what was beyond doubt was the excitement over the prospect of flying cars.
Seasoned corporate venturers, experienced lawyers and promising venture-backed startup executives all indulged in a common fascination. We might as well have all been wearing Batman pyjamas. We were a mostly male crowd, but, that said, the women there were equally thrilled. And why not? What could be more exciting than flying cars?
This is the first in a series of articles for a special report on venturing activity across the gamut of technologies and business models that are advancing “urban air mobility”, a phrase I first heard from Thomas d’Halluin, CEO of the US office of Airbus Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of the France-based aerospace company, who is interviewed below. D’Halluin explained that flying cars were a lot closer than we think. He also believed they had a faster route to market than autonomous vehicles.
Differing views are provided below by Jon Lauckner, president of GM Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of car manufacturer General Motors (GM); Varun Jain, senior investment manager at Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venturing vehicle for the mobile semiconductor maker; and Raj Singh, managing director at JetBlue Technology Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of the airline operator.
Each of these three venturing units is monitoring the autonomous vehicles and flying cars investment scene. GM’s $1bn acquisition of Cruise Automation – which had been backed by Qualcomm Ventures – put GM in the driving seat of future vehicle autonomy and provided a good exit for Qualcomm Ventures. As the venturing unit of a leading independent airline, JetBlue Ventures is predicting and readying itself for what Singh calls a “dog fight involving commercial planes, connected autonomous vehicles and flying cars”.
If you are in the transport business, then your venture strategy could perhaps be described most simply as trying to back the right fighting dogs. It is going to be fascinating, because nearly every technological advance that is good for autonomous vehicles is also good for flying cars and drones, and vice versa – they progress together as materials get lighter, batteries get stronger, light detection and ranging (lidar) improves and 5G goes mainstream.
Technology may not determine who wins this race. “Ground-based vehicles are much farther ahead from a regulatory standpoint than flying cars or drones,” said Lauckner. D’Halluin believed the key advantage for flying cars was that they operated in an underutilised environment. “Low-altitude space is actually quite free and available,” he said.
AirMap, a California-based airspace management platform, is one of the companies offering to organise low-altitude space safely. The company has developed a software platform that provides unmanned aerial vehicles with real-time airspace information and services, allowing them to fly safely at an altitude below 500 feet (150m). Its $23m series B round, which closed in February, was led by Microsoft Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of software provider Microsoft, with electronics and entertainment conglomerate Sony, Airbus Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures also involved. It is the latest in a growing number of deals that leverage satellite and internet technology, in which corporate VCs are increasingly active.
The debate over flying cars versus autonomous vehicles is set for takeoff. D’Halluin’s Paris-based colleague François Auque, chairman of Airbus Ventures who leads European venture investments, will lead this debate, which I will be moderating, at the GCV Symposium in London on May 23 with Qualcomm Ventures and others. Join us – and feel free to wear your Batman pyjamas.
